News Desk\/Agency
\nWASHINGTON
\nHaqqani has said that he made no admissions neither hurled any accusations in his opinion piece that has stirred a storm in the political circles in the country.
\nThe former Pak ambassador to the US said that he had penned the opinion piece on reports emerging in the media, adding that the matter was being blown out of proportion to divert attention from Panama and other issues. Haqqani clarified that he had admitted to the presence of the CIA in Pak, but hadn\u2019t claimed someone had intentionally facilitated their presence.
\nHe also criticised those asking for a parliamentary commission to probe the issue, saying the same people had termed a commission on memogate inadequate.
\n\u201cThe more one digs into the matter, the more will be revealed,\u201d said Haqqani, adding that people should not take the matter seriously.
\nIn his article, \u201cYes, the Russian ambassador met Trump\u2019s team. So? That\u2019s what we diplomats do\u201d \u2014 published in The Washington Post, Haqqani had admitted that with the authorisation of the-then elected civilian leaders he, as Pakistan\u2019s ambassador to US, had facilitated the presence of large number of CIA operatives in Pakistan to track down Osama bin Laden.
\nHaqqani identified the then president Zardari and PM Gillani as his \u201ccivilian leaders\u201d, and revealed, \u201cIn November 2011, I was forced to resign as ambassador after Pak\u2019s MI apparatus gained the upper hand in the country\u2019s perennial power struggle.
\nAmong the security establishment\u2019s grievances against me was the charge that I had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives who helped track down bin Laden without the knowledge of Pak\u2019s army \u2014 even though I had acted under the authorisation of Pak\u2019s elected civilian leaders.\u201d
\nHaqqani wrote: \u201cThe relationships I forged with members of Obama\u2019s campaign team also led to closer cooperation between Pakistan and the United States in fighting terrorism over the 31\/2 years I served as ambassador. These connections eventually enabled the United States to discover and eliminate bin Laden without depending on Pakistan\u2019s intelligence service or military, which were suspected of sympathy towards Islamist militants.\u201d
\nThe former ambassador said, \u201cFriends I made from the Obama campaign were able to ask, three years later, as National Security Council officials, for help in stationing US Special Operations and intelligence personnel on the ground in Pakistan. I brought the request directly to Pakistan\u2019s civilian leaders, who approved. Although the United States kept us officially out of the loop about the operation, these locally stationed Americans proved invaluable when Obama decided to send in Navy SEAL Team 6 without notifying Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
News Desk\/Agency WASHINGTON Haqqani has said that he made no admissions neither hurled any accusations in his opinion piece that has stirred a storm in the political circles in the country. The former Pak ambassador to the US said that he had penned the opinion piece on reports emerging in the media, adding that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-news"},"yoast_head":"\n